When I was teaching ESL in public schools I quickly learned to always have PowerPoints. Some of the better PowerPoints were those that dealt with places. Having ESL PowerPoints with pictures really helps a lot. Students can see places that they know, and translating that into English and their first language won’t be too difficult. I made several ESL geography PowerPoints, highlighted countries and oceans, and showed the different regions of the world. Students always enjoyed them, and there was a lot of new vocabulary words for those that were actually interested.

ESL Deserts PowerPoint

One of the better PowerPoints is Deserts of the World. This ESL PowerPoint will work great with the Desert Escape ESL adventure game. You can spend one week showing this to your classes and then play the game the next week or two. That could take you a month with some classes!

Here are a few things you should do before class:

Start off by downloading the PowerPoint and going through the different slides;

You’ll see a map of the world with 10 deserts highlighted;

You’ll then see a table showing the size of those deserts;

Next you’ll go through each of those 10 deserts one-by-one.

What is a Desert?

What gets many students right away is that the first desert shown is in the Antarctic. Most will say that a desert can’t have snow, but you’ll have to remind them of what the definition of a desert is. Scientists classify areas receiving 250mm of rainfall or less each year as a desert. Many cold regions, even though they’re covered in snow and ice, don’t get that much rain each year. Not happy? Your students probably won’t be either, and that will spur them to debate. Let them argue back and forth and just sit back and smile as the clock ticks away on your ESL class.

Fun Deserts

I loved doing this ESL PowerPoint in class for a very simple reason: I could easily tie in a movie. When you get to the Kalahari Desert you’ll be able to explain that people actually live in the desert year round. Perhaps you’ve seen the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” You can find it on many online sites, particularly in China where I was teaching. It’s great to show the first 10 to 15 minutes to let the students see what life is like in that desert. And hey, you can always show the whole movie later in the year, or even that class! Here’s a link for the video:http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/_2wACVThpL0/

Desert Vocabulary

There’s a lot of vocabulary you can throw at your ESL students with this PowerPoint. First, you have all the words that go with deserts near the end of the presentation. Make sure you present a lot of these words before class, like:

Continents

Sand Dune

Empty

Dry

Cactus

Cacti

Oasis

Mirage

Those words are a great place to start and you’ll probably find that your students can come up with many more. Have fun with the ESL Deserts of the World PowerPoint, available for free on esladventure.com!